Choral Public Domain Library

Hello,

I'm a newly registered member from a mixed German a capella chamber choir of ca. 25 singers, and I + our conductor are hoping for some repertoire recommendations.
And I hope that I am in the right forum for this.

During the past years, my choir has been invited twice to a choir workshop in Poland. In 2013 we will invite the Polish choir to our first own workshop in Germany, plus 20 "free" participants from our region at the Baltic Sea Coast.
We are now urgently looking for a workshop piece to prepare alone in ca. 5 weekly advance rehearsals and then together with the Polish choir and guest singers during the workshop weekend (including a final performance). Our own singers are an odd mix of untrained and semi-trained singers, aged 23-72, but so far we have nevertheless been doing very well at regional competitions and transregional festivals. The Polish choir is pretty good, but we do not know anything yet about the "guest singers".

Workshop history: Our Polish hosts so far selected the "Missa brevis" by Jan Szopinski and the "Missa Festiva" by Alexander Grechaninov as their - very successful - workshop pieces. The next piece (i.e. "our" piece) should not be any more difficult than that, but not too simple, either.

Other requirements:
20-30 min. total length, a cappella or with organ/piano accompaniment, maybe some percussion or even soloist(s) or individual instrument(s), but not a full orchestra (limited budget);
Latin would be ideal to save everybody language difficulties (e.g. another short mass). The style can be anything from 15th century to "modern", but no jazz, gospel, show, pop, etc. Nothing too mainstream, if possible.

I know it is difficult, but I would really be very grateful for some ideas.
Thank you very much in advance - dietlinde

To facilitate learning and rehearsals as separate choirs before joining, I would suggest to pick up something from my catalogue of free training aids. When the time available is short, you can save a lot of time if singers use them in advance.

The work most recently added to the catalogue that meets your requirements (maybe it's a little bit shorter) is "Magnificat in B" by Francesco Durante. A free vocal score by Claude Tallet is available on ChoralWiki.

This work is scored for two violins, viola, and continuo, and the full set of orchestral parts is available at a fairly reasonable price at Carus Verlag. Carus Verlag also proposes a version with organ accompaniment only.

These are my two (Euro)cents...

Max

Another possibility: Mass in G minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams, for S.A.T.B. soli and double chorus, with optional organ accompaniment. Quite possibly, the two choirs could each take one of the chorus parts. A scan is available at IMSLP; however, it is not Public Domain in the E.U., which would require purchasing scores to sing from.

When you have the opportunity of two choirs singing together, this might be ideal for actual works for double choir. Here are some suggestions from the CPDL editions:

• J.G. Rheinberger: Mass in Eb for double choir (Romantic work)
• H. Schütz: "Schwanengesang" (Early Baroque, might be too long)
• T.L. da Victoria: Missa "Alma redemptoris mater" (Late Renaissance, but similar to Rheinberger's caecilianistic mass)

Thank you everybody for these great suggestions. Beautiful music, all of it.
Some pieces proved to be too difficult, or we did not have enough singers/instrumentalists, or it did not match the rest of our repertoire too well, etc.

Just in case you are interested: We'll finally go with the "Eesti Missa" by Urmas Sisask in Latin, and the "Magnificat in B flat major", both just with organ.

But thank you everybody nevertheless for "enriching" my knowledge of the great music that is out there.